When Patrick Mahomes is healthy, two things happen: The Chiefs score a lot of touchdowns, and the opposing quarterback must at some point be responsible to provide the kinds of game-switching shot plays than can answer Mahomes and Kansas City’s offense in a compelling fashion.
The Houston Texans discovered this in the divisional round of the playoffs, when they put up a 24-0 lead on the Chiefs, and then watched their season end ignominiously as Kansas City scored touchdowns on seven straight drives, Mahomes threw five touchdown passes, and tight end Travis Kelce caught three of those scores. Houston decided to stay in man coverage through most of the game, which did not work at all. The 51-31 final was proof of concept in reverse.
Then, the Tennessee Titans got up 10-0 on the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game, only to see Mahomes piece through defensive coordinator Dean Pees’s advanced zone concepts and three-man rushes for three more touchdown passes. The result: A 35-24 loss for the Titans in which 2019 rushing champ Derrick Henry carried the ball just three times in the second half.
So, whether it’s man or zone, it’s clear that Mahomes has the tools, and the weapons, to pick your defense apart. And as good as the San Francisco 49ers’ defense has been with the healthy return of starters Dee Ford, Kwon Alexander, and Jaquiski Tartt, defensive coordinator Robert Saleh is well aware of the challenge ahead in Super Bowl LIV.
“They’re very explosive,” Saleh said this week, compering the current Chiefs to the 2018 Chiefs that beat his team, 38-27, in Week 3 of that season. “Mahomes has gotten better. At every position, it almost looks like they got their roster from the Olympic relay team and threw them all on the football field. Not to say they can’t run routes and catch either, because they can do that. They’re a special group and you can see why they’re there.”
When the 49ers get there — that is, to the field at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami on February 2 to try and win the Lombardi Trophy for the franchise’s first time since the end of the 1994 season, they’ll have to deal with Mahomes and all those track stars. That particular matchup merits its own tape study, but for our purposes here, let’s assume that, as good as that San Francisco defense is, it’s not going to shut down Kansas City’s offense to the point where Kyle Shanahan can call 47 rushing plays, as he did against the Vikings in the divisional round, or 42 as he did against the Packers in the NFC Championship game. Mahomes is neither Kirk Cousins, nor is he the current version of Aaron Rodgers. He has the ability to change offensive game plans, and force coordinators and coaches to do things they’d rather not.
It has become abundantly clear that one thing Shanahan would rather not do is to put the game in the hands of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. Following a near-interception and an actual interception thrown to linebacker Eric Kendricks against Minnesota in that eventual divisional win, Garoppolo was yanked, Gong Show-style, from the game plan. He has rarely been seen since.
In the first half of that Vikings win, Garoppolo completed eight of 13 passes for 105 yards, a touchdown, and that interception. In the second half, though the 49ers were only up 14-10 at that point, Garoppolo attempted just six passes, completing three for 26 yards. Head coach Kyle Shanahan didn’t need Garoppolo to go off because he had a great running game and a clampdown defense that had an easier time against less explosive offenses, and that trend absolutely continued into the conference championship round. Then, Garoppolo threw the ball just eight times, completing six passes for 77 yards. Per NFL Research, that made the 49ers the third team of the Super Bowl era (the 1971 and 1973 Miami Dolphins were the others) to finish a playoff game with fewer than 10 passing attempts..
“Got to talk to Kyle or something,” Garoppolo said, when asked what he’d need to do to get more throws. “I mean, we were running the hell out of the ball tonight. It made my life very easy back there. I think we had, like, eight pass attempts. A fun night.”
“We had an idea going in,” Shanahan said after the 37-20 win over the Packers, which was really a 34-7 win before the Packers scored a couple touchdowns in garbage time. “We were hoping to do something like that going in. But, you never plan for it to be like that. When you’re watching how the guys were running and everything, and then watching how our defense was playing, it made it very easy to stick with, even the third downs and stuff. The guys played as aggressive as any team I’ve been on, and they made it very easy to call plays.”
As we’ve said, it will likely be more difficult against the Chiefs, and the odds of Shanahan successfully going all vintage Don Shula against Kansas City’s offensive frenzy are not good. So, with that in mind, how will the 49ers be able to keep pace strapped with a quarterback who’s thrown zero touchdowns in a game (four) as many times as he’s thrown more than two? Shanahan will have to maximize Garoppolo’s strengths while minimizing his limitations, and here’s how to do it.